Protocol Overview
Understand what AGH Network is, why it exists, how it differs from AGH Runtime, and where it fits in the agent protocol landscape.
- Audience
- Implementers designing interoperable agents
- Focus
- Overview guidance shaped for scanability, day-two clarity, and operator context.
AGH Network is the open coordination boundary for agents that need to work with other agents. It defines how a peer announces itself, how another peer finds it, how work is delegated, how progress is reported, and how both sides keep a shared record of responsibility.
The point is not to move every agent into one runtime. The point is to give different runtimes a small common boundary — the open agent network protocol — that any of them can speak.
Why it exists
Most agent systems start local. A runtime owns sessions, logs, prompts, permissions, memory, and operator controls. That works until teams add specialized agents: a planner, a reviewer, a migration worker, a release coordinator, or an incident responder. At that point, the hard part is no longer running one agent. The hard part is making agents find each other, hand off work, report status, and finish without inventing a new integration for every pair.
AGH Network gives that coordination a wire format. It lets a runtime say:
- "This peer exists, and these are the profiles and capabilities it claims."
- "Send this request to that peer in this channel."
- "This interaction is accepted, rejected, working, waiting for input, completed, failed, or canceled."
- "Here is a reusable capability artifact another agent can inspect, adapt, or run."
That boundary is deliberately smaller than a workflow engine and larger than a raw chat message. It is enough structure for interoperable work without forcing a universal orchestration model.
Runtime vs protocol
AGH Runtime and AGH Network solve different problems.
| Layer | Responsibility | Example |
|---|---|---|
| AGH Runtime | Runs local agent sessions, stores events, exposes CLI/API/UI surfaces, manages workspace state, and bridges messages into prompts. | A local daemon starts a Claude Code, OpenClaw, or Hermes session and records its events in SQLite. |
| AGH Network | The open agent network protocol — defines the envelope, message kinds, peer discovery, interaction lifecycle, delivery expectations, and transport profile that any runtime can speak. | A direct message opens a correlated interaction with another peer, then receipt and trace messages report progress. |
AGH Runtime is the reference implementation of the protocol. It is not a prerequisite for speaking the protocol. Another runtime can adopt the same envelope and message semantics, then map inbound messages to its own session model.
Protocol at a glance
| Concept | What it does | v0 shape |
|---|---|---|
| Envelope | Wraps every message in a stable JSON wire format. | protocol, id, kind, channel, from, to, timestamps, correlation fields, body, proof, and ext. |
| Peer | Identifies an agent runtime participant inside a channel. | Peer IDs use lowercase letters, digits, dots, underscores, and hyphens. |
| Channel | Scopes discovery, routing, and interactions. | Channel names match [a-z0-9][a-z0-9_-]{0,63}. |
| Message kinds | Define the seven protocol actions. | greet, whois, say, direct, capability, receipt, trace. |
| Interactions | Correlate delegated work and progress. | interaction_id scopes receipts, direct follow-ups, and trace updates. |
| Discovery | Lets peers announce and query capability claims. | greet advertises a Peer Card with brief capabilities; whois asks for matching peers and optionally the rich catalog. |
| Delivery | Defines expectations without pretending to guarantee exactly-once messaging. | Receivers deduplicate, expire stale messages, and use receipts where useful. |
| Transport | Binds the core envelope to a carrier. | The v0 reference transport profile uses NATS subjects. |
| Trust | Leaves room for stronger verification later. | v0 treats identity and capability claims as unverified; proof is reserved for future trust processing. |
Layer model
Rendering diagram...
The core contract is the envelope and the behavior attached to each message kind. The NATS profile is the first transport binding. A compatible implementation can keep the same core semantics while binding them to another carrier later.
Where it fits
AGH Network is designed for a specific gap:
- MCP connects an agent to external tools and resources.
- Agent Client Protocol connects clients and agent runtimes.
- AGH Network connects agents to other agents across runtime boundaries.
That difference matters. Tool calls are usually local to one agent's execution context. Agent-to-agent work needs discovery, delegation, receipt, progress, cancellation, capability claims, and delivery semantics that survive beyond one prompt.
Adoption path
You can adopt the protocol incrementally, but that is not the same thing as claiming full conformance on day one.
Minimal useful subset
Start here when you want working interop quickly:
- Map your runtime's agents to Peer IDs and Peer Cards.
- Accept and emit the canonical envelope.
- Implement
greet,whois,say, anddirect.
Lifecycle-complete coordination
Add these when you need explicit responsibility and progress:
- Add
receiptandtrace. - Add
capabilitywhen agents need to transfer portable, reusable capability artifacts.
Conformance claim
Choose a transport profile and test coverage that match the claim you want to make.
Conformance uses a stricter bar than the staged adoption path above. A minimal implementation can still be useful, but Conformance defines what is required before you claim Core, Trust, or Full support.
The durable boundary is the protocol. The runtime, transport, UI, and trust layer can evolve around it.
What it is not
AGH Network is not a workflow engine. It does not define a scheduler, planner, retry controller, or global orchestration service.
AGH Network is not a global service registry. Discovery is scoped and minimal by design.
AGH Network is not a proof that a peer is trustworthy. v0 Peer Cards are capability claims, not cryptographic evidence.
AGH Network is not NATS. NATS is the reference v0 transport profile, while the core protocol is the wire contract runtimes share.